1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed in general to the field of information processing. In one aspect, the present invention relates a system for finding a maximum or minimum number in a set of numbers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Signal processing applications often require that a set of numbers be evaluated to find a peak number representing a maximum or minimum number from the set of numbers. For example, wideband digital communication transmitters which use crest factor reduction (CFR) algorithms to reduce the cost and improve efficiency of the power amplifiers by sequentially processing input signal samples to detect peaks in the signal envelope above a certain threshold, and then perform subtractive modification of a region surrounding each detected peak to suppress the peaks to below the threshold. In other applications, peak detection techniques may be used to identify localized waveform peaks (e.g. maximum or minimum values) when synchronizing signals. While existing solutions have been proposed for sorting and finding maximum/minimum numbers from a set of numbers, such solutions typically operate as sequential circuits that process one incoming data point at a time, or are otherwise confined to a fixed data size that is limited by a comparator unit width. In addition, existing approaches for evaluating a set of numbers to find a peak value can impose significant complexity and processing costs in terms of the required digital processing resources and clock cycles, thereby preventing real-time detection of maximum/minimum numbers.